Disney Streaming Antitrust Settlement: $50M Fund Open

At a glance

Status

Open

Defendant

The Walt Disney Company

Settlement fund

$50,000,000

Claim deadline

September 8, 2026

No-proof cash option

Yes — pro-rata cash, self-certified subscription length (no documentation)

Estimated payout

pro-rata cash, self-certified subscription length (no documentation)

Administrator

Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions

Official site

onlinetvsettlement.com

Court

Heather Biddle, et al. v. The Walt Disney Company, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose), Hon. Edward J. Davila

Case number

5:22-cv-07317-EJD, No. 5:22-cv-07317-EJD

Last verified July 16, 2026

Key dates

Milestone	Date	What it means
Claim deadline	September 8, 2026	Last day to file for a payment
Opt-out (exclusion) deadline	September 8, 2026	Last day to leave the settlement and keep the right to sue
Objection deadline	None listed	Last day to object to the terms
Final approval hearing	January 14, 2027	When the judge decides whether to approve the settlement
Expected payout	Not yet scheduled	Payments are not sent until after final approval and any appeals

Where to file

Disney (YouTube TV / DirecTV Stream) Streaming Antitrust Settlement is administered by Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions. The only place to file is the official settlement website:

File at the official site

onlinetvsettlement.com

Filing is free. No legitimate settlement charges a fee to file a claim.

You cannot file on RecordingLaw.com. We are an independent publisher, not the settlement administrator, and we are not affiliated with any court, agency, or defendant.

The Disney streaming antitrust settlement is a $50 million fund resolving claims that The Walt Disney Company's conduct inflated the price of YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream subscriptions. This is not a data breach. No personal information is alleged to have been exposed. If you had a qualifying subscription, here is what the case claims, where it stands, and how filing actually works.

What the lawsuit actually claims

This case is Heather Biddle, et al. v. The Walt Disney Company, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California and assigned to Judge Edward J. Davila under case number 5:22-cv-07317-EJD. The plaintiffs allege that Disney's conduct around bundling and licensing its programming inflated the price of streaming subscriptions for YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream, which also covers the earlier DirecTV Now and AT&T TV Now services.

In plain terms, the underlying dispute is about how Disney negotiated the terms under which its channels appeared in live-TV streaming bundles, and whether that arrangement made those bundles more expensive for subscribers than they otherwise would have been. It is an antitrust and consumer-protection theory, not a claim about a hack, a leak, or mishandled customer data.

Disney has not admitted wrongdoing. Like most class action settlements, this one resolves the litigation without a finding that Disney broke the law. It ends the case between the company and the class in exchange for the $50 million payment into a common fund, rather than through a trial verdict.

It is worth saying plainly: nobody's account, password, or personal data was reported stolen here. If you came to this page expecting a data breach notice, you are in the wrong place. This is a pricing dispute over how much subscribers paid for a bundle of channels, not a security incident, and the two categories should not be confused with each other.

Where the case stands right now

As of July 2026, Disney has agreed to the $50 million settlement, but the deal is not final. A federal judge still has to approve it at a final approval hearing, which the settlement's official site lists for January 14, 2027, in the San Jose division of the Northern District of California. Until that hearing happens and the judge signs off, no money moves.

That timeline matters because nobody has a payment date yet. The claim deadline, covered below, falls months before the final approval hearing, so filing a claim now does not require waiting for the judge's decision. It simply preserves your place in line if the settlement is approved as written.

One more distinction worth being precise about: the broader Biddle litigation originally involved three groups of subscribers, YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream, and FuboTV. This $50 million settlement resolves the claims of the YouTube TV and DirecTV Stream groups only. FuboTV subscribers are not covered by this deal; their claims against Disney remain a separate matter.

Who is actually in the class

You may be part of the class if you purchased a YouTube TV subscription, or a DirecTV Stream, DirecTV Now, or AT&T TV Now subscription, between April 1, 2019 and March 31, 2026. That is the class period as defined by the settlement.

If your only qualifying service was FuboTV, this settlement does not include you. If you never subscribed to any of the listed services during that window, you are also not part of the class.

How much you might realistically get

There is no fixed dollar amount attached to this settlement. The payout structure is pro rata cash based on a self-certified subscription length, meaning the length of time you say you held a qualifying subscription during the class period determines your share of the $50 million fund, without needing to submit receipts or account statements.

But pro rata cuts both ways. The actual per-person amount is not set in advance. It depends on how many people file valid claims and what the court approves for attorneys' fees, administrative costs, and any other deductions from the fund. If far more people file than the fund was sized for, individual payments shrink. If fewer file, payments can rise. Treat any specific number you see elsewhere, including on other websites, as an estimate, not a promise.

The settlement's official materials also disclose that the $50 million fund is divided using a split tied to which state's law applies to a claimant, sometimes described as a repealer versus non-repealer jurisdiction split. That is a legal technicality rooted in differences between state antitrust and consumer-protection statutes. It does not change how you file, but it is part of why one claimant's payment can differ from another's even with an identical subscription history.

What proof you need

None. This settlement uses a no-proof, self-certification model. You state how long you held a qualifying YouTube TV or DirecTV Stream (or DirecTV Now / AT&T TV Now) subscription during the class period, and that self-reported length is what your claim is based on. You do not need to dig up old billing statements or account screenshots to file.

How filing works

Filing happens on the settlement's official website, not on RecordingLaw.com or any other independent site. As of July 2026, the deadline to file a claim, or to exclude yourself from the settlement, is September 8, 2026. Filing is free. Nobody legitimate will ask you to pay a fee to submit a claim or to "expedite" a payment.

Be careful with the administrator's identity. As of July 2026, the settlement's official website does not name a claims administrator company anywhere on its FAQ or homepage; it lists only a P.O. Box in Portland, Oregon for anyone who needs to mail a request for exclusion or an objection. Treat any email, text message, or phone call that claims to represent a differently named "administrator" for this specific case with suspicion, and verify anything you receive against the official site before responding or clicking a link.

Opting out vs. objecting: they are not the same thing

These two options get confused constantly, and the structure of this settlement makes the distinction more important than usual, because both deadlines fall well before the case is finalized.

Opting out, also called exclusion, means you leave the class entirely. You give up any right to a payment from the $50 million fund, but you keep your own individual right to sue Disney separately over the same claims. The deadline to opt out is the same as the claim deadline: September 8, 2026.

Objecting means the opposite. You stay in the class and remain eligible for a payment, but you formally tell the judge, in writing, that you think some part of the settlement, the amount, the fee request, or something else, is unfair. As of July 2026, the settlement's official site lists an objection deadline of December 1, 2026, ahead of the January 14, 2027 final approval hearing. You cannot do both; opting out removes you from the class the objection process exists to influence.

If you only had FuboTV, or the deadline has passed

If your only qualifying subscription was FuboTV, you are not part of this settlement, and there is currently no claim process covering that portion of the underlying case against Disney. If you are reading this after September 8, 2026 and never submitted anything, this claims window has closed for you, since the claim and exclusion deadlines fall on the same date. Watch the official site for news out of the January 14, 2027 final approval hearing if you want to know how the case resolved, since a settlement that has not yet received final approval can still change.

This case did not involve a reported breach of personal data, so the credit-freeze and account-monitoring steps that make sense after an actual data breach are not relevant here.

For other open, currently verified settlements, including genuine data breach cases with their own separate claim windows, see RecordingLaw's data breach and privacy settlement tracker.